LITMIR.BIZ

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they ever find your birth mother?’

      ‘No. It was assumed she was a young teenager but she could have been anyone. No one came forward, no one was admitted to hospital with evident signs of recently giving birth, those who had given birth that day were all accounted for... She vanished. She could be anyone. My natural father could be anyone.’

      ‘Do you wonder about them?’

      ‘All the time.’ Her smile saddened. ‘I can’t look at a new face without scanning it for a resemblance but I know I’ll never find them. I pray my birth mother’s alive and well.’

      ‘You forgive her?’

      ‘Whatever her reasons for giving me up, she must have been terrified and in so much pain.’

      She meant it. He could see that clearly.

      Sophie had forgiven the woman who abandoned her.

      ‘How do you do it?’ he asked starkly. ‘How do you forgive? How can you open your heart so much when the people who should have loved and cared for you abandoned you as they did?’

      ‘Because I was found.’ She stared straight at him. ‘I will never know the reasons and I accept that. But I was found and I was saved—my cries were heard. I’ve known that all my life and all my life I’ve sworn that I will never ignore any living soul’s cries for help.’ She pressed a kiss to the puppy’s head, her eyes not leaving Javier’s face. ‘This little thing is as innocent and as helpless as I was and I will not abandon it.’

      ‘No.’ He sighed heavily.

      Everything about Sophie made sense now.

      He’d known she was different from the very start. He’d seen that goodness and compassion shining out of her, the reverse lens of himself.

      Where his heart had contracted into a shell, hers had expanded to embrace anyone who needed it.

      But she was tough too. Her heart was as soft as a sweetened sponge but her spine was made of steel.

      He did not doubt that she would take that abandoned dog and walk away from him if he refused to let it stay.

      ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I understand. The dog can stay. You can give it the love it needs.’

       I can give you the love you need too, if only you would let me.

      The thought popped into her head before Sophie could take it back but this time she did not push it away.

      She rubbed the soft ears of the sweet, loving thing in her arms and wished she could hold Javier in the same way.

      There was no point denying her feelings towards him any more. She loved him. She’d always loved him.

      The heart was incapable of listening to reason and her heart had attached itself to Javier the first time she’d set eyes on him.

      Whether he was capable of returning her love, she didn’t know and told herself it didn’t matter. His eyes had shone to see their child’s nursery. He was developing feelings for their unborn child, she was sure of it. He’d agreed that Frodo could stay, so there was something akin to compassion inside him.

      But Javier was far more damaged than the affectionate puppy in her arms.

      * * *

      Javier was reading the story he’d had emailed from a reporter who worked for an English newspaper when the landline on his office desk rang.

      He pressed the button. He’d told his PA not to put any calls through unless it was his wife.

      ‘I have Dante Moncada on line one,’ she told him. ‘He says it’s important.’

      He sighed. Dante Moncada was a Sicilian technology magnate who’d inherited a one-hundred-acre plot of land in a prime location off Florence that he had no use for and wanted to sell. Javier and Luis had been in talks about buying it from him. Nothing had been signed. It had been very early days in the talks when Javier and Luis had gone their separate ways.

      Javier had held off doing anything about the deal while the lawyers set about severing the Casillas brothers’ business, an issue that almost two months on was dragging interminably. Luis had communicated via their lawyers that he wanted to meet. Javier had refused. He never wanted to set eyes on his brother again.

      His anger at Luis’s treachery had not lessened in the slightest but he wanted a clean break for them.

      He might despise the man he had loved and protected his entire life but he would not do anything to gain an advantage in the severance. The lawyers would ensure everything was split equally. That had been his firm belief until Dante had called him the week before to inform him that Luis had made a private offer for the land and asking if Javier would like to counter it.

      His brother’s latest display of treachery had speared him but he had hardened himself.

      If his brother could be so disloyal as to hitch himself to the bitch who had worked to destroy him then Javier should not be surprised that Luis was going behind his back to steal business by targeting the clients they had cultivated together.

      Two could play that game. And Javier would win.

      ‘Yes,’ he had informed the Sicilian. ‘I would like to counter it. How much has he offered?’

      Dante had given him the figure. Javier had increased it. He’d been waiting for a response ever since.

      ‘Put him through,’ he said now.

      ‘Javier!’ came the thickly accented voice.

      ‘Dante. What can I do for you? Have you called to say you will accept my offer?’

      ‘I’m coming to Madrid tomorrow for a few days of business. I’ve bought an apartment in your city, so I’m going to throw a party to celebrate. Come. We can discuss business then.’

      His heart sank. Dante’s parties were as legendary as his party-loving brother’s.

      He estimated this was Dante’s tenth property purchase. The man would not be happy until he had property in every city in Europe.

      ‘Will Luis be there?’ he asked, stalling while he tried to think of an excuse.

      Javier loathed parties. He despised watching people lose their inhibitions through alcohol, becoming worse versions of themselves. It was why he never drank. His father had been volatile enough without the alcohol he had come to depend on. He would never risk doing the same. He’d attended his brother’s parties only so he could keep an eye on him and stop him doing stupid things, like swimming drunk.

      He would not go to any function his brother attended.

      ‘He’s not answering my calls, so...’

      The unspoken implication did not go over his head. If Luis was incommunicado then the land was Javier’s for the taking.

      ‘What’s the address?’

      Dante gave it to him, then finished by saying, ‘Bring your wife. Everyone’s dying to meet her.’

      He would rather swim with sharks with a gashed knee pouring blood than take Sophie to that Lothario’s party.

      Giving a non-committal grunt, he ended the call and rubbed his temples.

      He had a headache forming.

      He put a call through to his PA for a coffee and painkillers, then turned his attention back to the computer screen.

      Right then he had more important things to think about.

      It had taken him weeks to find the information he’d sought. He could have passed the job on to one of his employees to oversee on his behalf but this was something he’d needed to find himself.

      The reporter he’d paid to trawl through the archives of an English paper from Devon had finally come up trumps.

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